How does a team go from good to great? Kate O'Neill, CEO of Teaming, joins Pete today with an insider's perspective on how their team intelligence software revolutionizes how managers foster high-performing teams. From providing personalized communication coaching to enhancing interaction within diverse teams, Teaming's AI-driven platform is making waves in the professional world.
Kate recounts the strategic decisions that helped her startup flourish before diving into the heart of why Teaming was created—a solution to the void left by traditional project management tools. As CEOs, she and Pete also talk about the importance of communication skills as well as the struggles and triumphs of leadership.
The need for cohesiveness within a team has never been more pronounced. Join Pete and Kate in this enlightening discussion that will enrich your understanding of the modern workplace and equip you with the tools to build a thriving team.
Additional Resources:
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👋 FOLLOW PETE NEWSOME ONLINE:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petenewsome/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeteNewsome
👋 FOLLOW KATE O'NEILL ONLINE:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oneilkate/
How does a team go from good to great? Kate O'Neill, CEO of Teaming, joins Pete today with an insider's perspective on how their team intelligence software revolutionizes how managers foster high-performing teams. From providing personalized communication coaching to enhancing interaction within diverse teams, Teaming's AI-driven platform is making waves in the professional world.
Kate recounts the strategic decisions that helped her startup flourish before diving into the heart of why Teaming was created—a solution to the void left by traditional project management tools. As CEOs, she and Pete also talk about the importance of communication skills as well as the struggles and triumphs of leadership.
The need for cohesiveness within a team has never been more pronounced. Join Pete and Kate in this enlightening discussion that will enrich your understanding of the modern workplace and equip you with the tools to build a thriving team.
Additional Resources:
🧠 WANT TO LEARN MORE? Be sure to subscribe and check out 4 Corner Resources at https://www.4cornerresources.com/
👋 FOLLOW PETE NEWSOME ONLINE:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petenewsome/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeteNewsome
👋 FOLLOW KATE O'NEILL ONLINE:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oneilkate/
You're listening to the hire calling podcast. I'm Pete Newsome, and my guest today is Kate O'Neill. Kate's a co-founder and CEO of teaming, a team intelligence software platform for managers to help them build healthy, high performing teams at work. Kate, welcome, how are you today? Oh good, thank you so much for having me, pete. Awesome to have you here. I've been trying to get you on for a while now.
Kate O'Neill:Well, I appreciate your patience. You know I said this backstage, but I love the content you all are doing and I'm excited for our conversation.
Pete Newsome:Well, it's a small world. It's really neat to connect because we met on LinkedIn. Then you posted something that led me to meet someone else, josh Hammons. So we'll have to make sure Josh watches this, and Josh and I have become friends since that. We're friends on Facebook. Now We've met in person. We're talking about doing some things together professionally. It's really a cool way to use LinkedIn, so thank you for that.
Kate O'Neill:Real human can be cool to see that it's moving beyond just connections with me.
Pete Newsome:Yeah, there's a lot of interesting things on LinkedIn. I'm not sure if you're a Reddit user, but we talk a lot internally about the LinkedIn lunatics subreddit, so if you haven't discovered it yet, there's one on.
Kate O'Neill:Twitter. I'm going to find what the handle is and send it to you, but it's basically like. Basically it's calling people out in posts, being like this isn't a real story, nice, nice.
Pete Newsome:Well, that's a problem, though, with LinkedIn right now, where I know these aren't real stories and I won't name names, but there's huge accounts and they make these stories and they're selling their service and you can't. Yeah, I don't begrudge anyone doing that, but I just want to say come on, like this is. This is awful, and, being in staffing, at times it's even worse, because we see the advice that gets the most likes and shares and comments is stuff that would get someone fired on the spot, like no one should be recommending it.
Kate O'Neill:It's bad content, it's bad advice, yeah, but it's, it's dramatic. So people, it catches people's eye and they're like, ooh, you know, or or it's so heartwarming that people don't realize that it's not real. If you're doing that kind of stuff, it's just for likes and clicks and not for real connections. So I always take that with a grand assault and say, well, you know, I don't think anything meaningful will lead from it, but maybe but it works.
Pete Newsome:I mean, that's the struggle that I have. I don't know if you do as well, but it's a struggle between posting. I just can't sell out to that point. Now I will confess I've started posting some memes on LinkedIn and you know what I'm. I'm, I'm embarrassed to say that gets way more interaction and engagement than our serious stuff. And we talked a little bit about TikTok before we started recording our biggest TikTok video. I mean, we put out career advice all day, every day. Our biggest, our most viral video 33 million views. I think the last time I looked was a little boy pushing over his sister Like and with a funny comment about, like Monday, how Monday feels, or something like that. I'm like oh, what has happened in my life?
Kate O'Neill:Well, I mean, look, if you're, if you're, if that stuff is, is is crushing right and the stuff that's like serious, you know it's a balance right, the person who engaged with the brother and sister. Now they'll actually see the real content and that will start to do better and better Right. So it's like you know it's, it's sugar and vegetables.
Pete Newsome:That's right.
Kate O'Neill:You know, so I like it.
Pete Newsome:That's, that's our justification, right? It's brand recognition at work, so we'll keep doing it, and I. It's snowing in the background where you are, and you're only in Tennessee, that is. That's amazing.
Kate O'Neill:We are today it's only 2 pm and then apparently it's going to snow again on Thursday and Friday. So yeah, we're getting, we're getting dumped on.
Pete Newsome:How unusual is that it does mean for where you are.
Kate O'Neill:I think this has happened maybe two other times, and I moved here in 2019. So you know, less than once a year for sure.
Pete Newsome:Wow, I'm envious. I'm in Florida, it's actually I could use some beach time. Oh yeah, but it's too cold to go to the beach and but but it's too warm to really enjoy the winter. It's done now. I would trade. If you ever want to trade, Well, we'll have to talk about that.
Kate O'Neill:Let's do it. I like to come down to meet you and Josh.
Pete Newsome:So, yes, indeed, yeah, well, we'll, we'll plan on it, so, but so 2019. So tell me about your career leading up to teaming, because that's when you start. You found the teaming Right, is that? Is that what brought you to Nashville?
Kate O'Neill:It sort of Anders and I. Previous company was called Lean Kit. It did really large scale project management and process management for really large enterprises and I was their head of marketing. And then our former CEO, our former CIO and our former head of engineering all got together after that company sold and said we want to get the gang back together again. We saw the opportunity for teaming while at our previous company. So I actually knew when I took the job. I was living in Atlanta at the time and I knew that they were venture backed company and they would sell and you know, call it three to four years tops.
Kate O'Neill:And so I didn't want to sell my house in Atlanta. So I commuted up to Nashville for a few years. I'd come up Monday morning, I'd leave Thursday night, I took most Fridays off don't tell anyone and and so that that company sold within three years and and I was like great, I didn't sell my house but I did what I wanted to do career wise. It was a great opportunity for me. But then when I loved the team and we said let's start teaming, it was like all right, I got to make the move now, because this is going to be a 10 year thing at least. So so I made the move about six months before the pandemic. Okay, that's interesting.
Pete Newsome:Didn't see that come in, obviously.
Kate O'Neill:No, so I didn't have to move, I guess, but I'm really glad I did. I love Nashville. I still get back to Atlanta all the time. My family's there. It's a. It's three hours, three hours and 15 minutes or so from door to door for me and I was there last weekend quick weekend trip, and so that's. It's nice to be in a place I love to live, but close enough to family where I can see them. It's just a car ride away. Nice, that's a good distance.
Pete Newsome:That's appropriate. You don't want to be too close, that's good. Now, so how did, how did COVID affect you guys? You started this business, you had plans and then, boom, the world starts to fall apart around you. Yeah.
Kate O'Neill:And what stinks is like you know. You would think that the rise in remote work it did increase demand for tools like teaming, but we were just starting to write code for it and so we didn't have. We weren't there to capitalize on it, which Okay, thanks. But but it actually was great in the sense that I don't know how much you follow, like the funding industry, tech markets, but you know a lot of money got pumped into coming right.
Pete Newsome:I do yes, yes.
Kate O'Neill:We stayed. We stayed nimble and scrappy and and we took on a little bit of angel money, but we didn't go out and try to raise you know gobs of money at an unreasonable valuation. And so those businesses a lot of them haven't met their scale needs right to the money that they they took in at that time and so they've gone out of business.
Pete Newsome:It's happening a lot lately.
Kate O'Neill:Yeah, and we're I mean knock on wood, here We've we've survived, so that's been really helpful. You know it was hard, right. Everyone's taking all this money, this, you know, it's like the golden age of startup and and people are well, you're not doing that too, and so that was a hard, hard moment.
Pete Newsome:But if you, if you can get away with not doing that, what a home run, that's a win.
Kate O'Neill:You keep, keep the ownership.
Pete Newsome:Yes.
Kate O'Neill:So that's, you know I'm happy where that ended up. It was kind of hard, but and the other thing that was hard is, like you know, if you've ever you've done this where you're, you're trying to understand or achieve product market fit, but the the the market keeps changing.
Kate O'Neill:The world moved so fast or remote. Well, are we going back? I'm not sure. You know like now, this hybrid thing the world around us, the social things that were going on during that time all of that affected people managers in a different way at a different time, and so we felt like it was a little bit of whack-a-mole to try to understand the problem that they were facing because it kept changing. So that was. That was really hard. I think we've now narrowed in on how to really help managers and we've really started to see some some nice growth there.
Pete Newsome:So that's awesome.
Kate O'Neill:Yeah.
Pete Newsome:Well, let's go back. Let's go backwards in a little bit. What was the original premise for teaming? How did it come to be? Good question.
Kate O'Neill:So I mentioned, as I mentioned, we were a project management software company. You know our last company that sold and that company you know when we, when we would go into work with, call it like every, almost every corporate worker at Walmart used our software then and we would go to teams and understand how are we making you work faster? That was the promise of the software is. You know, we can help you have better processes so that you can deliver work faster. And we would see like we were. We're measuring their work so we can see you know Walmart's 3% more efficient.
Kate O'Neill:That's millions and millions of dollars. They're bottom line. But when you went and talked to the teams, they didn't feel faster and you're like, well, walk me through that a little bit. And we realized we weren't doing anything about what the the most important part of our capacity or our speed to deliver work, which is our attitude, our engagement at work, and our old software did none of that. In fact, it took, it took away a little bit from our engagement because it made people feel a little bit like a number.
Kate O'Neill:Like you know, I'm just this machine to go do work, which you know we're here to work, but because it was so, you know anyone could do this, or every team is doing this in the same way. So what's special about how we're doing it? It's not me, someone else could do this job, no problem. It made them feel a little bit under. So we said, all right, this is, these are human problems, and that's you know. Where we said All right, this is what teaming is going to focus on is how do we help managers and their teams create the environment they want to work, in that they can deliver work fast, in that they can increase their capacity to do work, and so that's what teaming does.
Pete Newsome:That is an incredibly large challenge Right, I mean in a big statement for you to make. I mean because I can tell you, having owned a business now for 18 years and wanting nothing more. When I started the company, I founded the business to be the company I couldn't find as an employee, and that meant a number of different things to me, but I found that what I wanted wasn't necessarily what everyone else wanted over the years, as we started to grow, and I found that to probably be my biggest limiter over the years, and that part of that is I'm I'm a career salesperson. I'm someone who was comfortable enough with my skill set and abilities to start a business. I had the right drive and motivation and work ethic and all those things just have to be in place and I had the right idea. I thought I could execute on it.
Pete Newsome:But that's an entirely different skill set than managing a team. I've come to realize to a painful degree at times, and that is something that I will tell you, 18 years in, I've not been able to solve, and I want everyone to like what they're doing. I want everyone to feel included and to be happy. But that's an incredibly difficult thing and so, ok, you've decided we can solve this right. How? How do you go about doing that? Where do you start?
Kate O'Neill:Yeah, good question, well one. I think you are not alone. People feel that very much. I mean, when you think about when you became a manager for the first time, right, or maybe it's when you're owning your own business, but even still you are now a manager, people don't think about that. If you're a salesperson, you think about the craft of sales, which does involve people, so you can get a little close, but you don't really think about I need to learn a new profession when I'm a manager.
Pete Newsome:Perfect way to put it.
Kate O'Neill:Yes, yeah, there is this stigma out there too that we should just be good at this, right, because we're either a natural leader, like oh, he's got natural leadership skills, so he should just know how to do this, or we think we're a bad person if we're not a good manager, right, or like this is a reflection of who we are as people rather than as our skills, and that's one misconception I try to get out right in front is management is its own distinct profession with its unique skills that have nothing to do with your functional area of expertise. Number one and number two they are skills, just like anything is a skill, right? Yes, you can have natural inclinations to be a good leader. There are things about our identity and our personality that make one leader maybe better suited or better to start as a leader, but if you don't continue to nurture those things and become an expert in them, become a learner of those things, you're not going to get better.
Pete Newsome:And no one's. I think you'd agree with this, but I believe anyone's intentionally bad at it, and they are bad, and I think, now more than ever, employees have higher expectations on their manager. They're more critical outwardly, publicly, at times, as we've probably all seen over the past week with this video that this young lady who was being fired or terminated from her software job have you seen it? You haven't seen this? All right then. I'm going to move on from it though, but she recorded herself being laid off, and it's been pretty viral over the past week and the criticism that comes out for, just as Vittorol claimed, the employer. It is so quick to happen now, and I always think well, no one is intentionally being awful, right, they, and so All right, so so that's a huge problem. We know it's a problem, I'm part of the problem, god knows that. So where do you go from there? I mean, how do you even begin to tackle that cake? Because that's just insurmountable, it seems to me.
Kate O'Neill:Well, people, problems are messy problems, for sure, and I think it's also reframe a little bit. You know you might solve one problem and then use that same approach for another, very similar problem at a different time, and it's a different time, and that right. So the world is changing around you as you're trying to navigate these things like communication or having hard conversations, the things that managers need to do, like firing someone. There are just ways that you learn how to do these things that I think are good, just first principles of management that some managers know, some don't. A lot of companies don't teach them, so then they don't know. So that's sort of like layer one.
Kate O'Neill:Ok, what are the first principles of management? Layer two is how can we help people to do these things faster? So that's where that's where teaming Well, I would say we do both which is teaming is a software platform where you do your work, so we are in your meetings. I don't have it in here, but like it's an assistant that joins every meeting for you and takes meeting notes, right, so you can stay engaged in the conversation.
Kate O'Neill:You can really see active listening, right, all the things that we know are important, and so we're automating where we can. We are automating things for particularly managers, because that's usually where it starts, right, where they're setting the tone. They're setting what's behavior is acceptable, what's not. How we're going to communicate, what are our team norms going to be right? So there's a lot of help from teaming to the manager. But the team member is also included, right, they are also using teaming in their meetings and we say, ok, we're going to automate what we can and then we're going to coach directly each person based on their communication styles and preferences.
Kate O'Neill:So if you think about an algorithm, right, or training a piece of software to me, right, let's say you are my manager, right, and you have a very specific communication style and it is opposite of mine. Yes, we are much more likely to butt heads because we communicate differently. There are also cultural things, right, we're from different areas of the country. We, you know you're a man, I'm a woman, right, like those things can be. Just, we're different people.
Pete Newsome:All the above, yeah.
Kate O'Neill:Yeah, all the above. And so we say, OK, teaming is going to learn about both these people, about how they're communicating in the meetings. So it's not just taking notes, it's learning how we communicate and then offers very tailored coaching about what topics were communicated really well, based on our communication styles and what could be improved. So I like to use this as an example. Let's say you're a, you're a high like, let's keep this high level, and I'm a details person. I got to know the deal. Let's start with the details and then let's work our way to the big picture.
Kate O'Neill:That is like two really hard ways to come into a conversation, but it happens all the time. I will get coaching on the times, these very specific topics. You know Project Twitter or Project Glass, whatever, where I kept it high level and you appreciated that because it's what you were looking for in the status update from me. And then, conversely, I'll get hey, you know, in this instance, when you talked about, you know, project matches, you know you really dove into the details and you didn't need to Because wasn't what Pete was looking for.
Pete Newsome:Okay.
Kate O'Neill:And then vice versa, right when I might need help with something, or I don't know something that I maybe should know, or it's a different expectation of me that's new and I don't know what to do. You'll get coaching, very specific to me, that says, hey, when Kate was doing this new thing, you let her dive into the details and ask you lots of different detailed questions, and that was great for her because she learned how to do the thing that she's gonna be able to not dive into the details with you again afterwards.
Pete Newsome:Okay, okay.
Kate O'Neill:Very specifically honed in on first management, like first principles. As managers right, your responsibility, my responsibility. You know how we do career stuff, goal setting, all that and then we layer on top of that how, exactly how you're communicating. Let's learn exactly how to make your communication better, more effective over time.
Pete Newsome:I mean this sounds too good to be true. Okay, because and I can say it really resonates with me because of what I admitted to you already is that this is not my strength, and I'll tell you a story in a minute of how not my strength it really is. But what are you assessing and interpreting and reading to be able to offer that feedback? How does I mean? Just not, don't get too technical with it because it'll go over my head, but how does that work?
Kate O'Neill:Have you ever taken a disc assessment or Myers-Briggs?
Pete Newsome:Yes.
Kate O'Neill:So we start with the disc. Okay, You're kind of for teaming you take a disc assessment. Okay, use that as your call it, your natural style and your general style. And then we know, because we're in the meetings with you, we know when you're presenting that style and when you're not.
Pete Newsome:Okay.
Kate O'Neill:Like when you're getting fired, for instance you. That's an adrenaline, it's a really uncomfortable situation, right? It's different than your natural style, right? So we know the contact sorry, the content ends the context of a meeting and you know basically what is the standard deviation of your communication, off of your, like, natural, general, any given day type of communication.
Pete Newsome:Okay, that makes sense yeah.
Kate O'Neill:Yeah, and then same for me, right, and we kind of see where the building blocks fit and where they don't fit, but that's.
Pete Newsome:Yeah, that makes. So. When you say we, we're talking AI, right, teaming is an AI, I know it's not you, you know looking over our shoulder. But what about a scenario where which I think this is this applies to my internal team, I think most teams where now we used to give disc assessments, people and we tried to hire based on those, but we kind of threw it out the window because we realized, just because you fall into one category, it doesn't mean you can't be good. There's, you know, there's, people can have different strengths and weaknesses and if they apply them the right way, they can be equally effective. Right? So we, we, we don't do it anymore, but we did it. So I lived that for a while. But having lived that, I can tell you that some people on our team have very different styles. So what, while mine may apply a certain way, how it's going to be interpreted is going to differ, if in a group conversation. So how do you reconcile that?
Kate O'Neill:That's exactly that's so interesting. You said that. So that's that's where the real power of AI comes in, because our brains can't grok that right. Like I can't understand when you know when you are presenting this way or when you're not right, machines can do that for us. And and I should blanket this all with sort of a warning which is this is new, right, we don't know what the feedback we're getting back from this is like wow.
Pete Newsome:Okay.
Kate O'Neill:So me, right. And that's when you think about the history of things like disk, myers-briggs, strengths, finder, enneagram, all that stuff. They're just frameworks that our human minds came up with. They're not based on science, right, right? And so the the you know the how good is this thing? Right, this framework is basically what we make of it. Disk has been around for a hundred years because people think that I did identify. That is me.
Pete Newsome:Right.
Kate O'Neill:You know, and we continue to share our, share it with each other and ask each other to take and to be known by other people right To have better communication, to do these things, but it's it's, you know, it's the, it's still the stone tablet version, really right? All of those assessments are that.
Pete Newsome:Sure.
Kate O'Neill:Now, with AI, right, we can actually attribute the. The disk attributes to the actual communication, to the context, right? Am I being fired right now? Am I being promoted right now? Am I, am I talking to a peer or a boss? Am I talking to a direct report? Right, like? What are the power dynamics? All that stuff can be fed into a machine to understand and to package it together, to know whether or not the disk or the Myers-Briggs or whatever is actually true of us and in what situations are they true, with which people. And so so we will layer over and in the app you can see, it's very basic. Right now, it's just the disk where we'll show you who you are as individuals and then we'll show you what are your combined strengths. So so, kate and Pete together, what are the things they're really good at together and what are the things that they need work on?
Pete Newsome:Okay.
Kate O'Neill:And what's really interesting to me is we gravitate towards people who are like us, who communicate like us.
Pete Newsome:Sure makes sense.
Kate O'Neill:Because it's easier, right, it's easier to communicate the way someone you know to. When you have a common way of communicating, it just feels easier to us. But what's interesting is that two similar people have the biggest blind spots in the way that they communicate, the way they behave, the way they innovate, the way they have creative ideas, right? So you, yes, it's easier, but in the same time, you're more limited with what you're gonna be able to do together. Often, Sure.
Kate O'Neill:We'll see. Well, you know, like the AI, you know, in five years we'll be having this conversation. We will know, you know what. The truth of these things but it's what we early see, right Is that two similar people will gravitate towards each other at first, but have struggles to break out of or to do different things or to communicate in different ways that are necessary, sometimes with the context. Now, the reverse is true for two very opposite people, right, who have opposite communication styles. It's gonna be harder at first, but when they're able to learn and to grow together, it can be really fruitful. They can do different things, explore different areas, have more creative ideas together, appreciate each other's strengths and blind spots because it's usually, you know, compensating for the other, right. Like we appreciate each other, it's easier to appreciate the differences. So I don't know if that answers you?
Pete Newsome:No, it does. Well, and it makes sense, complete sense. If two people are, you know, have the exact same perspective on everything, that doesn't account for how they're communicating externally to anyone else, so they may get along, you know, fabulously, but as they're trying to share their message to anyone else that doesn't fall in line with their perspective, it's gonna be. They're gonna miss out on a lot of opportunities.
Kate O'Neill:Yeah, absolutely, and what I think, where machines also come in, which we're just about to release this tomorrow. I cannot wait to see what's going on All right, hot off the press.
Kate O'Neill:Yeah, so we are. We now will analyze all like, let's say, this is a one-on-one you're my manager weekly or bi-weekly one-on-one with you to go through. You know how are we progressing towards our goals? Am I performing? You know? What do you need to know for me about the work, those kinds of things that we talk about in one-on-ones. We will now analyze the series, the one-on-one series, and say hey to you. We'll say hey, you know, here's a list of suggested topics for your next one-on-one and they are based on topics that never came to resolution in your recent one-on-ones. Right, we will show you why that is important, based on my communication style. Let's say I brought up the fact that I don't have various detailed career goals once three months ago. That could mean a lot to me, but I didn't bring it up. I only brought it up once and it didn't come to resolution and it's not my style to bring it up again right, okay.
Kate O'Neill:Teaming will now tell you hey, this is important, or it's likely important, to Kate. Maybe you should bring it up again. And then we'll also remind you of the context from your last conversation. Where did you leave the conversation, so you can pick up with it where you left off right, I mean this sounds amazing really.
Pete Newsome:I didn't know much about teaming before this conversation right now, and I'm thinking of so many applications for it in my own situation and what has limited me as a manager, and one employee in particular comes to mind where, great employee, there's so much good but there's just a conflict, always under the surface, that seems when we communicate with each other. Right, where I say something, it sounds one way coming from me, but I know it's interpreted a different way consistently and it's frustrating, and I know it's frustrating for this individual as well. Right, because I think I don't think I should have that reaction Like I didn't. I thought this was going to be something you'd like to hear and clearly body language, tone, you can read how well the message is delivered, but it doesn't necessarily mean you can do something about it, and I think that's been such a limitation for me and so many others.
Pete Newsome:I don't think my plight in this is that much of an anomaly where I mean well, but the delivery is. Now, if someone is aligned with me, the delivery is great. Here it is few words, boom, we're off and running. But that's limiting. You can't scale that way as a business. I can Guarantee that is limited our growth over the years?
Kate O'Neill:Look, yeah, I mean we started out this. How do you solve this problem? Sometimes it can't be solved right, sometimes it's just where we are in life or what we have going on, or whatever the case may be right. And sometimes it is that with a hard employee, you can lead someone to water but you can't make them drink, kind of things. But we can make sure that we're doing and we can now understand at a deeper level those people and understand that we are doing everything we can to make that person a success and that's how I rest at night. I don't know about you, but like hey, I've done everything I can do. This person can either come to it and want to work here, see the career progression they could have, see the potential money they could make, whatever their motivations are, which teaming will help you to know right, sometimes it's just not going to work out, but I think we can make a way better impact on employee turnover and we are. We're seeing it.
Pete Newsome:That's so fascinating.
Kate O'Neill:One-on-one great connection.
Pete Newsome:I can point to the time where the world shifted, the societal shift kicked in generational shift is probably the better way to put it where what had allowed us to grow up until that point, what I was taught, what I believed to be all that was necessary as far as opportunity that was presented to employees. An employee resigned because he wanted to pursue his passion, and the passion was going to pay significantly less, and it was a road that had nothing to do with the one we were on, and I looked at him like he was crazy for resigning, for walking away from a significant income to one that wasn't nearly as good and not going to lead to the same kind of path, and that was 2014. And not long after that. I didn't know what I was seeing at the time but, looking back, that was the beginning of a big shift in generational perspectives and what was important and what I was kind of alluded to earlier, what I thought I needed to provide as an employer, what I wanted as an employee, was no longer enough, and it now employs expects so much more than I did coming out of school, and once that is ingrained, it doesn't really change. I don't think so.
Pete Newsome:Now we have a generation who graduated or is coming into their professional life at a time where they could work from wherever you want. I mean, while I'm a fan of that, well, it's hard to go backwards, that genie's hard to put back in the bottle. And so many young professionals now came out of school at a time where it was so much, it was an employee's market to a degree that I haven't seen in the 30 years since I graduated from college. Well, boy, talk about setting your perspective in a dangerous way, because now that pendulum has swung back a little bit, it's not so much an employee's market anymore, and so it's struggle. So there's all these things that my age is hard to contend with and see their perspective, but it's absolutely necessary. So, as you're talking, I'm thinking this is, boy, what a I mean what a solution for the modern time that we're in.
Kate O'Neill:Well, look what you're. The perspective you have right of the last 30 years is an important one, but even take it out further, right. This is the first time in human history where teams have been as diverse as they are. It's the first time in human history where remote work is a possibility. Right, it's the first time at all. Yes, it's the first time in human history where we have four generations in the workplace. Right, it was like one or two at best.
Pete Newsome:Right.
Kate O'Neill:Now it's three or four and that's sort of like age diversity, right. But it makes making those common human connections, where we see people who are similar to us, where we do communicate, really easily, right, which is an important part of our working world and our community and all that as is, you know, connecting with others. But you see less of that, and so the the, the responsibility of making sure that the team creates the connections necessary for healthy, high performance, is harder. It's just harder than it's ever been.
Pete Newsome:Oh, by the way, at a time where we don't interact with each other outside of business, we don't see each other in the hall, walk, in the parking lot at lunch. You know all those things. This is it. This is all you get and the limited feedback that you know that comes with it. That's something that I, you know. I'm trying to watch 15 people at once on zoom to see how a statement you know is is received right, which is nearly impossible.
Kate O'Neill:The other thing that is become less structured as well. So we we talked about agile. You probably are familiar with this agile transformation, right?
Pete Newsome:Of course.
Kate O'Neill:You know, 30 years ago. I felt this way 10 years ago, where I worked in the marketing department. I talked to other marketers all day and I did marketing work and and. Fast forward just 10 years and it's like I spend most of my time with sales people, customer success people, it tech developer people to deliver marketing projects. Right, because that's the world we live in now.
Kate O'Neill:And so we're not even speaking the same common functional language with most of the people we work with. And then, finally, the way that we've progressed in our career changes too. So we used to have a very like, we used to have very hierarchical organizations where you, you know, you got past, I got promoted, I went up this way. Now it's very and it's continuing this trend to be way more horizontal, where our ability to influence people and to, to you know, sell our idea or help to inspire people to work on the project that we're doing, those skills become, so like, more important than ever because there's not a clear path. The path is, you know, pivots on the mountain rather than a straight line yes, yes, absolutely.
Kate O'Neill:So a young? I feel so bad for a young person because there's no playbook anymore.
Pete Newsome:Well it? Well, because that's how Zendig came to be and we talked a little bit about that. Now we're talking about you know, we're here through through, you know, in this podcast because of a four corner resources, the staffing company that I'm president of. But we launched Zendig and the reason why it's a Z in the because it's a winding path. So our original logo, which we couldn't really make work to come to agreement on you're a marketing person, you know how this goes, but but we loved the premise of a winding path because that is so true.
Pete Newsome:What people go to school for and I won't go down this road right now whether they should go to school, whether they need to, and there is no great source for finding those answers. And then when you're out in the real world, it's even worse, because now you're there alone and you have bills to pay and responsibilities and you have to figure all this out and it's a mess, right. And so if you don't feel, I mean as you're talking, I get it. I mean I hate that so many people who've worked for us over the years have not felt that they could just be open with us and communicate with us and connect.
Pete Newsome:It's probably been the hardest thing for me to overcome and even though it's been 18 years since I started my own business was feeling like the emperor with no clothes, like because I'm the last to know if someone's upset or bothered by something. And we've made policy changes and procedures. I mean you have to put the stuff in place as you grow as an organization. Even though I didn't want to at first, I wanted to be free and not let policy and procedure ever slow us down. I still think we do that, but we have to have some structure. And to find out that people were so upset by these changes but just there was no mechanism by which they could communicate. And it sounds like you're helping solve a lot of these problems, which I think is so necessary and important.
Kate O'Neill:It's just hard to navigate work these days. Right, we'll use the power of AI to help with human connection. Right, automate the things we can automate so that we can focus on communicating well, connecting well and using a machine to help me better understand people. It just makes sense, right? What I love so much about when I see new users of Teaming is that everything's private, right, so you'll see the feedback about your own communication with me just to you, right? No one else can see that. But what happens, which I love, is that they'll share it with each other and say was this right? Like, is this how you felt? Right, and that's the aha moment. Right, that's when two people are taking the conversation offline, outside of the machine, to really use it as a connection point. Right, to better understand each other.
Kate O'Neill:And that's what we're looking for at work, you know, or that's what we need. Right, there is actual science on what is always true of a healthy, high performing team, no matter what team type it is, no matter how long you've been working together, whether you're co-located or remote, right, none of that matters. There's actual attributes of the way the group operates that are necessary to be healthy and high performing, and that's what we want to help teams be able to focus on. It's the hard stuff, it's trust, it's accountability, it's, you know, commitment. It's focus right, shared focus. Those things are so hard to build, so let's one automate what we can so we can stay engaged in the human connection of things and then use machines to help us understand where we're connecting and where we're not, to be better right.
Pete Newsome:Oh man, so true, so necessary. All right, I'm convinced anyone who's listening now will would be. You could not be from this conversation. So where do we go? So someone's, if we're interested in teaming, want to learn more, want to use, you know, get started, walk, walk me through that.
Kate O'Neill:Yeah, good question. So one, I'm always available. I try. We're a small team and this is still new. By the way, we're a pretty young company. There's still a lot of work we need to do. So I say that all with the caveat of we'll work with us on it. On it, it might not be the the I shouldn't say that people have really great experience up front, but I try to really talk to everyone. So if you're interested in being a customer, send me a DM on on LinkedIn. I'm always ready to either hop on a zoom, walk you through it in a shared video. However you prefer to communicate, I'll do.
Kate O'Neill:But you can sign up on your own if you want to. At teamingcom you can sign up free. There's a 14 day free trial If you need an extension on that, I know someone need more time with it, but but yeah, you can kind of choose your own adventure. When you sign up and you get to take your disc assessment, you invite teaming into your meetings. It works in person too, so it works. If you're going into a meeting room and you've got like the room reserved, we'll hook into the mic to in the room to actually do it in person If that's your, your style or that's how you're you're set up.
Kate O'Neill:So, yeah, that that's how it, that that's where it is and the agenda things coming out tomorrow, so that'll be part of your free trial.
Pete Newsome:Awesome.
Kate O'Neill:It takes some time right. We learn over time, so the longer you use it, the more smart it gets.
Pete Newsome:That's, that's AI, right. It is someone who's used it almost daily for the for a little over a year now. The learning, the, the, the back and forth, the interaction is is is fascinating to watch and we're just we're just at the or just scratching the surface of where it's going.
Kate O'Neill:For you, and maybe this is the age old question I don't said no one ever.
Pete Newsome:Okay, great, I can't wait to hear what's next.
Kate O'Neill:Because hiring gets all the glory and the money and the. You know the excitement. Right Is, is that right when? How do we find new people? How do we find the right people? Right, it's, it's the, it's the like new toy always in in this industry. Right Versus hey, how do we make it work with the people we've got?
Pete Newsome:Yeah, well, get well, okay. So let me I can address that. We are not in the retention business, but you'd be surprised at how many companies blame us with. You know, as an industry, right, In a profession, when the, when the employee doesn't work out despite that. And so you mentioned something a few minutes ago. You said that it's things aren't perfect yet. Well, things are never going to be perfect.
Pete Newsome:One of the things that I've said over the years to prospective clients is don't think that working with us will eliminate problems. I guarantee you will have problems if we work together enough, because people are our product, is people right, and so our product walks and talks and thanks and gets drunk on Sunday night and doesn't show up on Monday. So we have that element. Right, your software is not going out partying tonight, right, it's going to be there in the morning. Well, ours has a spouse that is bad influence and has car problems, and you know you name it right. So there's that.
Pete Newsome:But also, we're the outsiders, we're the, so we, our relationships are best. So, having been in this industry a long time, I've the hiring happens a whole lot of different ways, but what works well for us is where we're considered an extension of the organization we work with. They really consider us a partner, and I don't mean that in the cliche way, because everyone says that, but where they see value in what we do. And you know that from from your career to where, if you're just a vendor, that the second you make a mistake or do something wrong or you're not valued, then there's no relationship at all and it's really not healthy. And so staffing could be great, but it could also be fraught with challenges. I'll just say so don't be envious. I was going to say I haven't.
Kate O'Neill:It's a really interesting perspective because I haven't thought about that Like I. You know, you see all the amazing things that the tech and the, you know, all the resources that go into staffing and and I don't think about the reverse of you get blamed too.
Pete Newsome:And I'll tell you the interesting. So when I started this is how old I am in 1993, we didn't have monster career builder. The internet wasn't, wasn't? I mean, the internet existed thanks to Al Gore, but it but it wasn't a thing that you had on your desktop and certainly not in the form it is today.
Pete Newsome:So when I would post job ads, I would do it in newspaper, trade magazines, resumes would be mailed and faxed to me, and I didn't know where the next candidate resume was going to come from, right when, if I go on LinkedIn today, there's thousands and thousands, and so there's always another one to come, and so I didn't have to place as much value on that individual interaction and conversation. So when I had a resume if I had your resume, Kate, it was like gold, because I may not have another one to, I may not have another person to call, so I wouldn't have to invest fully in that conversation. It made me really good. I had to be good Now, and so technology.
Pete Newsome:This is a good example of where technology has made us not as good as we used to be, and so you know, I sound like the old guy saying that, and my team probably rolls their eyes when they hear it. But I'll back that up all day long. Because you didn't have any other choice, you couldn't rely on technology, and so it's a crutch and it's a good one. I wouldn't trade it. I don't want to go backwards, it's just made us more efficient. But anyone who's on LinkedIn today sees the complaints that happen. Candidates, you know, frustrated they can't get an interview. Recruiters won't call them back and it is impractical. If you're a recruiter, if you have a thousand applicants for a job you're never going to see. You know, number 101 to number 1000, you're just never going to. So it's a. It's a weird system right now that we've created for recruiting.
Kate O'Neill:That's a great perspective. Yeah, that's really interesting. I I've never thought of it that way and now that you say that, like, I think there's one executive recruiter that I've really enjoyed and actually trusted right to place me somewhere, whereas everything else has just been through my network, because it's who you trust right and there has to be a level of trust there on both sides. For a recruiter, the company's got to trust you to find the right person and the right person has to trust you to place them in the right environment. It's it's really hard work and I absolutely see how technology can be a correction, correction. That world.
Pete Newsome:It has. It has become that, you know, with the need for efficiency and speed, where I would argue it's, it's in, there's, there's third parties now that exist to set. They exist in between the hiring manager and the staffing companies, and that sounds great on paper If you're the company saying, hey, you look, how efficient this is and, by the way, we charge the staffing company for that service and your managers don't have to get involved, and I would reject that entirely. If I'm hiring for you, I have to hear from you, I have to know who you want, not just what you need. And if I'm doing my job well, I'm going to deliver one resume to you and that's the person you're going to hire. And so I will never recruit based on volume, even though that's become attractive. So I could go on for days about that. You're getting more than you asked for with that question.
Kate O'Neill:No, I'm glad, I'm glad he mindset to, and maybe this is wrong to think this way. But hire slow, fire fast. Hiring slow right is really just like finding the right person is so important.
Pete Newsome:But that can go too far too. I saw the best post on LinkedIn an hour before we got on today. I'm going to try to get exactly it said. If Alabama can replace the best coach in the history of college coaching in a day, how come it takes you so long to fill your accounting opening? It was so perfect.
Pete Newsome:I'm like man. I wish I had written that because you know, because to your point, like I get it. You're like I want to find the perfect person, and I would argue there's no perfect right, there is no perfect person. So find the person that feels good. And I've been on that, receiving a niche position.
Pete Newsome:This is years ago and there was one person in the state of Florida qualified for the role I mean, and we delivered this person just by sheer luck is in coincidence as much as anything else. Finding them so quickly. But within a couple of days of being asked to fill this role, and the C level person who we were recruiting for was so freaked out by that. She's like I can't hire this person right away and I'm like why she goes? Because it's too fast. I'm like but it's, but the person's perfect.
Pete Newsome:And she's like I know but and so she couldn't come out with any words or phrases to justify it, but it was that uncertain feeling and fortunately I took a month to get her, to convince her that there was no other candidate. Because she said, well, send me more. I'm like there is no more and I'm not doing my job If I'm going to send you someone not as good as the one I've already sent. Right, that doesn't reflect well on me. So it's, as you get into the on the recruiter side of the table, you see a little bit of a different perspective. I think, yeah, that's interesting.
Kate O'Neill:I want to come to that. To me that's the perfect example of they. They retained their old coach for a very long time and they did succession planning, I'm sure right with him as things. You know. They did the things with the people that they had really well so that they could recruit really fast, you know.
Pete Newsome:I don't know. But this new guy, I mean, do you know much? I don't know if you're a college football fan, but they hired the guy who was sort of the hot, you know, you know, new coach. He was the coach of Washington and they, they, they just were in the championship game and so he just bailed on Washington to go over there and it just happened so fast. And you're thinking replacing Nick Saban. You know the arguably you know, the winning best coach of all time. I don't know the stats or he's not the only good coach, but it's, I'm like man. That was, that was. How can you replace this legend that quickly? And they did it.
Pete Newsome:So it was such a good post on. Like that, I'm like man. I wish that was mine. Well, kate, this has been. You've been so generous with your time.
Pete Newsome:I'm going to put you on the spot with one more question, actually two. Let me ask you this. One first Team size. We didn't, we didn't cover that. Is there a team that's too small or too big? No, okay. So teams of any size. You want them, you can help them, love it. So here's my put you on the spot question.
Pete Newsome:I would love to have you back on and talk about your path as a co-founder with three other co-founders, I think and now you're the CEO. But that is a journey that I think a lot of people would be interested in, because that's a hard thing to navigate. That's a lot of, that's a lot of chiefs, and not everyone does that effectively. So I'd love to have that conversation too, because, as I'm sure you know, having started your own business, now people like say the same thing to you that they have to me for years I want to do that, I want to go on my own, I want to and there's pros and cons of that, there's pitfalls. It's not as. It's not as rosy as some people think. So can you come back on at some point and have that conversation?
Kate O'Neill:I would absolutely love to. I'll say say briefly well, my co, one of my co-founders, is my old boss and now technically he reports to me.
Pete Newsome:Nice, very nice.
Kate O'Neill:Yeah, it is interesting. Yeah, I would love to to talk about it. I never expected to do this, so so, yeah, I would love to to to chat about the path and and how it came to be. And then, lastly, on team size, something that we talk about a lot in teaming, which is we've architected teaming in such a way where the team is private. So, like, the most important thing between relationships and the group dynamic is trust. Right, do I trust this person and do I trust this group? And so there is no, there's no company view in teaming. There's no HR, no admin, no IT that can go in and see your stuff, and that's been a that is a massive change that's going to need to happen in enterprise software. Right, do we expect that you know our? Well? I don't know if. Can our whole family see our Instagram? Or our whole whole family see our Facebook? Right now? Like, it's just, it's your, it's your profile?
Kate O'Neill:Yes, it's your team, and so we team side, you can have a team of any size, but it's private to just the people on the team, like, people outside the team can't even see that the team exists when they sign up for teaming Nice, and so that's something that is foundational, right. So it does change his group, like, if it's a team of two like you, you know, you, me and you it's it is going to be different because there isn't group dynamics at play. If there were 10 or 12 of us, that's different, right. If there's 50 of us, that's, that's different. 150. Have you heard of Dunbar's number? It's, it's like from the days of hunting and gathering, where we can't know more than 150 people. Okay, okay. So when a company gets like at 148, everyone can know each other at 151. Impossible, interesting.
Pete Newsome:Okay.
Kate O'Neill:You know, truly like it's that stark of a change and so so like that's a different. You know you can have a team of 150 people we have them but the expectations and the dynamics are so different. You know, that's sort of like a technical answer but also a philosophical answer that we try to help people to understand as they onboard in teaming that especially when your team grows, the dynamic is going to change. There will be new challenges and same with contracting right there there are layoffs or whatever. The dynamic is going to change. There's going to be hard things to work through, but you do it together and that's the good thing and you'll have a private space to actually do that.
Pete Newsome:That's so important because employees need that outlet. They want that outlet. They go public when they don't have a private space to do it and no one no one wins with that right Because it just it creates. It's a bad scenario that currently exists and you're solving that. That's huge. That's awesome. I love it. I think you are so, kate, thank you You're. We're going to put all your contact information in the show notes. You're easy to find on LinkedIn teamingcom. Couldn't be easier. I love the domain. You'll have to tell me later how you got that one. I will say also we are.
Kate O'Neill:We are in the process of rebranding, so teamingcom will always go to our new domain, and we don't have that yet, but it will be different at some point. Okay, all right, we'll get that out there, just in case someone goes to teamingcom in the future and it's different, it's still us, but different.
Pete Newsome:All right, we'll be on standby to see it. We look forward to it and I'm excited to see everything you're going to do, and I'm now going to be talking to my CFO about how we we start to become a customer too, because I think it just makes sense. So I'm convinced and, like I said earlier, everyone else has to be too after listening to this. Okay, thank you.
Kate O'Neill:Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me and I can't wait to come back.
Pete Newsome:You're, you're, you're committed, awesome, all right, everyone, thanks for listening.